After drilling a well that intersects a subterranean hydrocarbon bearing reservoir, a variety of well tools can be positioned in the wellbore during completion, production or remedial activities. For example, temporary packers are often set in the wellbore during the completion and production phases of the well. In addition, various operating tools including flow controllers, plugs, bridge plugs, cement retainers, through tubing bridge plugs, chokes, valves, safety devices, safety valves and the like are often releasably positioned in the wellbore. The tools may be lowered downhole by a wireline or work string. Then, a setting device having moving parts is actuated to engage and fasten the tool to the formation or lined borehole wall.
Such tools can be actuated with an explosive device, and later retrieved or destructed. However, there are hazards and other undesirable consequences of using explosives to actuate the tool. Alternatively, such tools are set and retrieved mechanically via the wireline or work string. A mechanical actuator exerts a mechanical force on the tool to be set. The mechanical actuator may include one structural body moved relative to another structural body. The mechanical force of the actuator can act in different directions, such as longitudinally or axially relative to the well. The mechanical force may be created by surface manipulations. In other tools, a hydraulic force may be exerted on the tool by a fluid under pressure, or by a pressure differential in the tool. In turn, the fluid pressure is used to actuate the tool. In all of these tools, the actuation process is constrained by the downhole environment, wherein pressure, temperature and the overall dynamics of the well produce high levels of uncertainty.
These tools provide little control over and feedback from the actuation process, including the actions of the actuator and the set device, and the final position of the set device. An explosive setting device uses a single, disruptive event to actuate the tool. A hydraulically or mechanically actuated tool performs in such a way that its behavior is predictable at the surface of a well, but sometimes downhole conditions defy prediction and cause the operation to fail in some or all respects. As hydrocarbon development continues to venture into deeper environments, equipment is subjected to more corrosive conditions due to higher temperatures, higher pressures, increasingly corrosive fluids and higher duty cycles. Further, such tools do not provide variable control for adjusting to downhole conditions, or feedback mechanisms for obtaining information during or after the setting operation. If a set device, such as a packer, is not successfully set, little can be known about why, such as whether the actuator or the packer was at fault. As higher quality is demanded of the actuation process and the performance of the device set in the well, current actuation tools are pushed beyond their limits.